Thursday March 11, 2020 ~ SOOKE
by Mary Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
The pace and momentum of shopping at Village Food Markets in Sooke has been pretty steady, with so far no rush-shopping related to people stocking up for the COVID-19 situation.
That was according to Village Foods store manager Wayne Kneeshaw last week. He doesn’t expect to see a rush on things like toilet paper, as was happening at places like CostCo last week. That’s more for the big box stores, he said.
“There’s not a store that doesn’t mind” a rush of retail customers who want to stock up, Kneeshaw told West Shore Voice News. He would just bring in more supply.
Meanwhile, as of last week he has also not seen any supply interruptions due to the blockades that happened across Canada in February.
The COVID-19 situation may yet ramp up. Today the World Health Organization declared a COVID-19 pandemic and the federal government of Canada is providing the provinces with financial support for the health care system and has waived the one-week waiting period for anyone applying for Employment Insurance (EI). BC Health announced the first case of COVID-19 on Vancouver Island today – a man in his 60s who returned from travel in Egypt.
As for stocking up, he advises people to pay attention to shelf dates (food expiry dates) on products such as canned goods. He says that the trend on canned foods is for shelf-dates to be shorter than they used to be (e.g. eight months instead of a year). “But unless a can is bulging, the contents are still good,” he says.
The long-time Village Foods manager says that elderly people in particular tend to stock up on canned foods at any time.
Village Food Markets is an independent, locally owned full grocery store, located at 103-6661 Sooke Road in Sooke town centre. They are open seven days a week from 7am to 10pm. Lots of parking.
Village Foods raises money for local schools through their Milk Money program, and are sponsors of the Sooke Thunderbirds football team.
They no longer office single-use plastic bags at the checkout, but will supply paper bags for 10 cents.